Cream Bell owner Devyani Food Industries is empowering its salesforce with digital tools to meet new-age demands
KAMAL KARNATAK
RJ CORP (DEVYANI FOODS)
To streamline the processes, the company implemented a sales force automation solution. Our sales force has been empowered with android-based handheld devices with pre-loaded application. Sales people follow the complete process of order fulfilment using only that device.
Selling ice cream can be more complicated than what one can imagine, especially when you need to distribute it to hundreds and thousands of outlets. Devyani Food Industries, the makers of Cream Bell ice creams, had to face a similar challenge despite being one of the fastest growing brands of ice cream in India having its manufacturing units at Baddi (HP), Goa and Kosi (Mathura). Despite dealing with distributors, Devyani hires a huge sales force for taking the orders from retailers and for ensuring right deliveries.
Although the company has been using SAP to manage its entire business processes, it was not enough for it to get visibility into its operations on a real-time basis. In a digital age, the FMCG firm had to move forward with a new plan. “The sale from the company to its distributors is handled in SAP but there was no system to capture the sale between the distributors and the retailers. There is a set of secondary distributors (VRS) who operate ice cream pushcarts. The sales force was taking manual orders from the retailer which were prone to manual errors and moreover, real-time data of sales, distributor inventory, promotional sale and stock availability was unavailable,” says Kamal Karnatak, Group CIO, RJ Corp (Devyani Food's parent company), while explaining the company's challenges.
At present, 400 such devices have been rolled out and the company plans to roll out around 4,000 in the first phase. As per the solution, the entire sale captured in SAP moves automatically to the sales portal. Any distributor can log on to the sales portal and manage the inventory. All the sale routes are mapped with individual salespersons. Every salesperson is given an android device. This device comprises the details of all the retailers on that route. The salesperson follows the route as per plan and take orders in that device. The entire sale process of taking orders, chillers (fridges provided by the company), checking and stock maintenance is done through the handheld device which is directly synced with Azure Cloud.
The use of Cloud and real-time updates is helping the company conduct sentiment analysis of its end customers through social listening. The move has helped Devyani Food improve customer satisfaction, its segmentation of the market and outreach. With a one-time cost of buying devices and investing in backend systems, the company has been able to increase operational efficiencies and margins and thereby improve sales productivity. But most importantly, it has lowered the cost of doing business and boosted Devyani's top-line revenue.
The project is the starting stone in Devyani Food's digital transformation journey. The company will now be working on monetising IT and create more revenue earning opportunities through it.
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